Worse as a timeline, you would remove Hitler, but Stalin is still there, so you could end up in a world where the Soviet Union becomes the great conquering state of the age, with no Germany for them to grind blood and flesh against.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
As someone who has actually played on a Commodore and Atari when I was a kid, it's been...REALLY fun watching video games evolve. Six Generations of consoles, watching PC games go from text based to text based with visuals I'm looking at you Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego, to Wolfenstein and DOOM, Quake, etc... Looking back it's amazing what we did with so little back then.
I find it more amazing how little we do with all we have now.
That's deep Drake.
Though I think it's changing. The thinking on what can be done in games is starting to catch up with the new capabilities.
We've had to go through phases of learning. We still are. Just because we have the technology doesn't mean we know how to use it properly...yet.
North Korea is still here, too. We lost. Only one Iconian died. How many did the Coalition lose?
We're not under the control of North Korea or the Iconians, so not sure what your point is.
My point is that the Coalition didn't win the Iconian war, anymore than the US won the Korean war. No treaty was signed, no restitutions were made, and from an attrition standpoint, the Coalition was on the wrong end of a thorough drubbing. Hell, one of the bad guys even said it was going to go on fighting.
Another case of Starfleet disregarding the needs of the many due to one captain's personal, moral, objections. The option to waste the Iconians in the past really should have been an option.
I think there is a treaty in place, a singular agreement between the Iconians and the Coalition, they agree to go away and not bother anyone again, and we agree to leave them alone.
Well that's one way of looking at it. But to be a Starfleet Captain has always meant you're going to be the one alone in the field, against the unknown, and you're given the authority to make major decisions that could affect all of Starfleet/Earth/The Federation's interest with little to no support. They select the Captains with those strong moral personal characteristics so that they will have someone trustworthy to make the call when the committee isn't available for consultation. Of curious note, with a Starfleet Captain and Kagran there, they had two command level officers representing two out of the three primary factions of the Alliance present to make the call.
And the moral judgment here was do nothing, participate in genocide, or take a third option.
As far as the needs of the many there are two ways to look at it. First the helping the Iconians thing was working until Sela chose to complete the mission (and failed to kill her soul mate T'Khet), that's what switched it to the present as we know it.
More pertinent, we don't actually know what would've happened if we had gone the "Renegade" route, so I agree with you, the "bad" option should've been shown. It would've been curious if things had turned out worse requiring us to...go back and fix it? Intercepting ourselves? That would be messy. It would've been a nice early cameo for Captain Walker if he had to come back and help us correct our mistake.
Technically, no. The moral judgement was to take no action, or destroy an enemy that is committing genocide. Destroying an enemy who is trying to destroy you isn't genocide, it's self defense.
Helping the Iconians was not an option because of Sela. It was not an option because the rest of the galaxy attacked the Iconians out of jealousy, greed, and avarice. At that point T'ket was going to start taking revenge no matter what, it even said so.
We should have gone farther back in time and wasted whomever the firebrands were that advocated attacking Iconia in the first place. This is why time travel isn't a very good mechanic for storytelling. Not only for the paradoxes that are created, but because there is no beginning or end, and things can always be done differently, depending on how far back, or ahead, you go.
Curiously, Starfleet never sends anyone back in time to stop the Eugenics War. Kill Khan as a child and save the lives of millions.
That I suppose is a question of personal morality. The Prime Directive is clear, non-interference in events, and the Temporal Prime Directive is the same. So by the book, you're correct. It's a matter of whether or not you can personally stand by and watch who are at that time defenseless people get slaughtered.
There is a calculated risk at the decision itself. Our Captain could've been calculating that the Iconians would remember our kindness and intervention, instead of it just being a personal do the right thing. A plan that Sela of course promptly throws in the trash because she can't see past the end of her own nose. Fitting for the girl who got her own mother killed.
Actually Sela is the to use a Star Wars term, Shatterpoint. The Iconians are intelligent enough to know that the races that came after and the races in the present are not the same. Sela's actions turned the rage squarely to us. Her actions also deprived them of the World Heart, their entire civilization. So they defaulted back to survival. Notice that as soon as they had the World Heart back they immediately dropped the war (T'Khet is an anomaly apparently she was always an TRIBBLE$hole, her and Sela are actually soul mates). With the World Heart they could literally rebuild everything that they lost except the people. I suppose it also metaphorically represents their heart. They lost their heart and became cruel, and we returned it to them and they found their mercy again. Back on subject.
Keeping the peaceful Iconians in power? That's one heck of a temporal change. It would also have required significant planning. We're talking about taking down every major power of the Iconian's time. Seems unfeasible to me.
And I agree. Please understand I work from a Watsonian perspective usually. From a Doylist perspective I despise time travel except as a purely passive research tool.
Killing Khan? Not so sure that's a good idea. He was, "The Best of the Tyrants". I think the implication is that Khan actually took down even worse elements of the Eugenics War as he was the most civilized of them. I imagine that without his presence, the Eugenics Wars may have been worse. In the same way that Saddam Hussein was a check on Iran's power and kept terrorists out of his country, but was still a brutal TRIBBLE.
I would also place it in the same vein as the assassinate Hitler question. Without World War II we would not have had the massive upsurge in American military and economic strength that occurred. There was lack of impetus. Without the German and Jewish scientists that he chased out of the country we may not have developed practical nuclear science, at least not on that time frame. Without those German scientists no ballistic missiles, so the moon shot is dramatically set back if we ever go the space travel route at all. You could delay the space age by half a century. Worse as a timeline, you would remove Hitler, but Stalin is still there, so you could end up in a world where the Soviet Union becomes the great conquering state of the age, with no Germany for them to grind blood and flesh against.
On that same note, I have a theory that the genetically enhanced intellect of the augments and the struggle to stop them, actually created avenues of science that led directly to Zephram Cochrane having the scientific base to invent warp drive. Fusion power actually preceded warp drive in the Star Trek timeline. Sometimes our mistakes lead directly to our triumphs.
Not personal morality, so much as pragmatism. If 13 genocidal Iconians need to go, so millions of innocents are not slaughtered, that's a bargain anyway you look at it. Needs of the many versus the few or the one. That being said, a better solution would have been to go back in time and kill Sela, or make Tasha sterile. I'm sure if she was privy to the evils her daughter would perpetrate, she'd go along with it. That's the idiocy of time travel, 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon.
I don't believe Sela was the shatterpoint. I believe T'ket would have wreaked it's veangeance on those responsible for Iconia's destruction, and then used the ensuing feeling of relief to become First among Equals. Any tyrant knows that removing opposition through violence really is the easiest way, and it only gets easier the more you do it. And who's to say it's vendetta wouldn't have carried through the ages to present day, perhaps one of the past aggressors escapes into the future. What then?
You wouldn't have to remove every major power, just a few key individuals in the right place, at the right time.
I see your point on the Khan issue. Jet Li made a movie called "Hero" a few years back that pondered this same question. What is best for the people? One great tyrant? Or many small ones.
However, I disagree that trying to save the lives of even a hundred innocents, isn't worth it if it's going to set technology back a few steps. Time marches on, stuff will happen, regardless of who get's the credit for it. For all the technological advancements in human history, it was never just one guy discovering something out of the blue. There were always a handful of others right behind him that were just a fraction of a second too late for the Eureka! moment.
On the Hitler issue, it's also possible that somebody in the U.S.S.R see's Hitler's assassination, and thinks "Gee, it's that simple, huh?" and assassinates Stalin shortly thereafter.
But at that point they weren't genocidal Iconians. It was still a point where they could've been positively influenced. It wasn't wrong to try.
If you want to talk about Sela, send Captain Picard in Yesterday's Enterprise a Temporal Prime Directive email expressly forbidding sending officers back with temporally displaced starships. Curiously, I can't come up with any reason that it's a good idea for Sela to exist...that's rather...sad. I suppose we need her to bring the Dominion into the battle. Though they were late.
T'Khet was loyal among her sisters. I can't see her knocking off M'Tara because M'Tara was always the leader. I do know there's a theory that she let M'Tara die in order to get L'Mirren on her side, BUT even after that, L'Mirren still outranked her. That said. We'd have to go back in time and assassinate ourselves, since T'Khet was going to stay at her post and die til we talked her out of that. Something I never actually would've done. I would've respected her decision like Kahless respected the guy who would not run from the storm.
Yeah. It has occurred that one great tyrant can have beneficial effects in the long run.
Except that the Hitler thing wouldn't just be about setting up the technological advancement, but the American century. It's true however that without the threat of TRIBBLE Germany Great Britain would've remained the preeminent world power, but we don't actually know what else that would've caused. I suppose you want to go knock off Hideki Tojo as well, not that he was the only Japanese Imperialist. In fact to resolve that problem you'd have to basically get them a cut of the spoils of war at the end of World War I, because all Japanese were disgruntled at the end of that conflict.
Sometimes things happen at just the right time. The lack of those things happening in another timeline could actually cause worse catastrophes.
I despise the very notion of going back and trying to perfect the future. It will never end. Someone going back and trying to tweak this one thing. A history with no mistakes. No losses. Such a thing does not exist, nor is it healthy. History that you learn nothing from. If that's what you want hop in cryostasis and wait for the Nexus to come around again. In the words of Jim Kirk, "I don't want my pain taken away, I need my pain."
Yes, a truly insane amount of people died in the Iconian War. Are we actually going to go back and stop every war, stop every unnatural death? It's ludicrous. Leave history as it is. That's why it's history.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
North Korea is still here, too. We lost. Only one Iconian died. How many did the Coalition lose?
We're not under the control of North Korea or the Iconians, so not sure what your point is.
My point is that the Coalition didn't win the Iconian war, anymore than the US won the Korean war. No treaty was signed, no restitutions were made, and from an attrition standpoint, the Coalition was on the wrong end of a thorough drubbing. Hell, one of the bad guys even said it was going to go on fighting.
Another case of Starfleet disregarding the needs of the many due to one captain's personal, moral, objections. The option to waste the Iconians in the past really should have been an option.
I think there is a treaty in place, a singular agreement between the Iconians and the Coalition, they agree to go away and not bother anyone again, and we agree to leave them alone.
Well that's one way of looking at it. But to be a Starfleet Captain has always meant you're going to be the one alone in the field, against the unknown, and you're given the authority to make major decisions that could affect all of Starfleet/Earth/The Federation's interest with little to no support. They select the Captains with those strong moral personal characteristics so that they will have someone trustworthy to make the call when the committee isn't available for consultation. Of curious note, with a Starfleet Captain and Kagran there, they had two command level officers representing two out of the three primary factions of the Alliance present to make the call.
And the moral judgment here was do nothing, participate in genocide, or take a third option.
As far as the needs of the many there are two ways to look at it. First the helping the Iconians thing was working until Sela chose to complete the mission (and failed to kill her soul mate T'Khet), that's what switched it to the present as we know it.
More pertinent, we don't actually know what would've happened if we had gone the "Renegade" route, so I agree with you, the "bad" option should've been shown. It would've been curious if things had turned out worse requiring us to...go back and fix it? Intercepting ourselves? That would be messy. It would've been a nice early cameo for Captain Walker if he had to come back and help us correct our mistake.
Technically, no. The moral judgement was to take no action, or destroy an enemy that is committing genocide. Destroying an enemy who is trying to destroy you isn't genocide, it's self defense.
Helping the Iconians was not an option because of Sela. It was not an option because the rest of the galaxy attacked the Iconians out of jealousy, greed, and avarice. At that point T'ket was going to start taking revenge no matter what, it even said so.
We should have gone farther back in time and wasted whomever the firebrands were that advocated attacking Iconia in the first place. This is why time travel isn't a very good mechanic for storytelling. Not only for the paradoxes that are created, but because there is no beginning or end, and things can always be done differently, depending on how far back, or ahead, you go.
Curiously, Starfleet never sends anyone back in time to stop the Eugenics War. Kill Khan as a child and save the lives of millions.
It'd be a giant temporal paradox that'd erase the Federation as we know it from existence.
The Iconia thing would be worse.... changing history in a major way that far back in time? Earth might not even exist if that happened.
It'd be a giant temporal paradox that'd erase the Federation as we know it from existence.
The Iconia thing would be worse.... changing history in a major way that far back in time? Earth might not even exist if that happened.
Or it could have made the universe a better place for everyone. We only tried a fraction of scenarios.
Well, that's the problem with temporal experimentation... you make the wrong mistake and you lose your ability to go back and fix it. Bad idea.
That's why they tried doing it virtually through the holodeck, so that they wouldn't have to actually change history to figure out if the scenario was a good idea or not. But since it ultimately (and rightfully) proved to be all but useless, we learn the lesson that it's probably better not to tamper with it at all if we can help it.
It'd be a giant temporal paradox that'd erase the Federation as we know it from existence.
The Iconia thing would be worse.... changing history in a major way that far back in time? Earth might not even exist if that happened.
Or it could have made the universe a better place for everyone. We only tried a fraction of scenarios.
In theory there are infinite scenarios including the outcome you want. But unless you know how to get to that outcome, well...|
Imagine your friend has chronic back pain from a spinal injury. It can theoretically be solved by surgery.
Now imagine you have no medical training and no doctor is available.
Do you slice your friend open and attempt spinal surgery?
See how absurd that can get?
Because we can do something in theory doesn't mean we have the skill to do it reliably in practice.
Then factor in that different types of time travel seem to have different rules how the timeline can be altered and what paradoxes are likely to result. We don't even have the paradox management tools like the temporal integrator yet.
And that reminds me, I like how they made Noye, Future Guy.
Unless Noye has a falling out with the Sphere Builders(which seems unlikely considering his whole motivation for his actions is Clauda), Noye CAN'T be Future Guy, because Future Guy was opposed to the Sphere Builders. He gave Archer the info needed to go on the Expanse mission, which directly leads to him stopping the SBs.
And that reminds me, I like how they made Noye, Future Guy.
Unless Noye has a falling out with the Sphere Builders(which seems unlikely considering his whole motivation for his actions is Clauda), Noye CAN'T be Future Guy, because Future Guy was opposed to the Sphere Builders. He gave Archer the info needed to go on the Expanse mission, which directly leads to him stopping the SBs.
Aw man thank you so much. Shows how long it's been since I got to watch Enterprise. Ever since sci-fi became SyFy stopped rerunning it. Though I may have just blocked out large pieces of the Temporal Cold War arc. I would say that his appearance at the signing of the accords was intentionally reminiscent however.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Forget time travel i find it more amusing that we have ships full of crews yet didn't think to bring back up nor since we now suspect him of treason we didn't send crews to guard the anarax time ship.
One thing that does interest me is future guy, we know he was a faction against the sphere builders which are now more or less confirmed to be crazy krenim's wife, so will we see him or worse IS IT US DUN DUN DUN
I had this thought too. Especially given that Future Guy was supposed to be from a faction that couldn't actually time travel, only communicate through time.
Really, at no point does Future Guy ever directly attempt to stop the birth of the Federation, just tries to get Archer out of his (possibily metaphorical) hair. The one time he, or at least his Suliban agents, went too far and DID wipe out the Federation, it erased HIM too. All the other times after, he either only came into conflict with Enterprise when they also got involved in temporal shenanigans (the fight over Dano's time ship) or actively helped them (the info on the Sphere Builders, against Vosk).
Future guy could easily be the player captain saying 'TRIBBLE you guys, I'll fix it myself' to the other factions and pulling a Kirk to do what they can to fix things on their own.
Forget time travel i find it more amusing that we have ships full of crews yet didn't think to bring back up nor since we now suspect him of treason we didn't send crews to guard the anarax time ship.
One thing that does interest me is future guy, we know he was a faction against the sphere builders which are now more or less confirmed to be crazy krenim's wife, so will we see him or worse IS IT US DUN DUN DUN
I had this thought too. Especially given that Future Guy was supposed to be from a faction that couldn't actually time travel, only communicate through time.
Really, at no point does Future Guy ever directly attempt to stop the birth of the Federation, just tries to get Archer out of his (possibily metaphorical) hair. The one time he, or at least his Suliban agents, went too far and DID wipe out the Federation, it erased HIM too. All the other times after, he either only came into conflict with Enterprise when they also got involved in temporal shenanigans (the fight over Dano's time ship) or actively helped them (the info on the Sphere Builders, against Vosk).
Future guy could easily be the player captain saying 'TRIBBLE you guys, I'll fix it myself' to the other factions and pulling a Kirk to do what they can to fix things on their own.
Maybe Future Guy is an Iconian? Part Iconian? T'Ket and Sela's son?
Im just pissed there was no side with the Tholians portion to this mission! Random dude just appears oh hes gotta be the good guy lets side with him! We just went to the past to wipe out the Iconians why not think the Tholians are doing something similar? Stop anti-Tholian bias!!
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
not to mention the shattering of the laws of physics - they're both FEMALES
To be fair...ALL the named Iconians we've ever seen are females...which leads me to an interesting sexual diamophism theory, considering all the HERALDS we've met seem pretty male...
not to mention the shattering of the laws of physics - they're both FEMALES
To be fair...ALL the named Iconians we've ever seen are females...which leads me to an interesting sexual diamophism theory, considering all the HERALDS we've met seem pretty male...
That seems logical. Reminds me of "The bringers of pleasure and pain" bit with the Fabrini in "For the world is Hollow and I have touched the sky". Or the ladies and gents of Angel One. A biological caste system perhaps. The females for some reason developed greater intellect and then bred the males to be subservient. Perhaps the result of an ancient divide, men and women living as separate tribes only meeting for mating, the females however advanced by generations in science and technology rapidly while the males were at a stand still. Maybe the Iconians had a Themyscira and invisible jets.
But the male heralds seem blissful (sex must be great), while the Iconians see them as companions and pets.
Iconians were also apparently evolving away from just biology as they were on the path of immortality while reproducing less. They might have been heading towards non-corporeal evolution. I mean their brains are intertwined chroniton particles.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Valoreah, I dispute that "with a timeship, all things are possible, given infinite time". In the original episode, we saw this by implication - no matter how many incursions were made, it was not possible to completely undo the results of the original incursion until the existence of the timeship itself, and thus all of its actions, was undone. Everything proceeded from that first cause, and until that was removed, all the way back to the start, all they could do was get incrementally closer - but never entirely there, like Zeno's arrow.
The 2002 remake of The Time Machine sets up a similar paradox: without the event that causes the Time Machine to be built (in an attempt to undo it), it will not be; thus, no matter what the Traveller does in an attempt to undo that event, it cannot be undone in a timeline where the Machine exists, because the Machine's existence depends on it.
Even with time travel, some things are still impossible. The set of infinities accessible by any given time machine and/or traveller is constrained by their personal timeline or history - their origin and any past actions. You can't undo these events and prior incursions, though others can; they already happened for you, and anything you do to change them further flows from that. The only way to get back to the original state is for everything to be undone (by someone else) back to that point. (And the only way I can see to 'cheat' around this, which is limited to very specific circumstances, is to deceive your past self through careful use of the Observer Effect, so that you didn't actually do what you thought you did.)
That seems logical. Reminds me of "The bringers of pleasure and pain" bit with the Fabrini in "For the world is Hollow and I have touched the sky". Or the ladies and gents of Angel One. A biological caste system perhaps. The females for some reason developed greater intellect and then bred the males to be subservient. Perhaps the result of an ancient divide, men and women living as separate tribes only meeting for mating, the females however advanced by generations in science and technology rapidly while the males were at a stand still. Maybe the Iconians had a Themyscira and invisible jets.
But the male heralds seem blissful (sex must be great), while the Iconians see them as companions and pets.
Iconians were also apparently evolving away from just biology as they were on the path of immortality while reproducing less. They might have been heading towards non-corporeal evolution. I mean their brains are intertwined chroniton particles.
Iconians could also have a plain and simple matriarchy and their males do not hold positions of political power. You know, how men on Earth did all throughout modern history. You don't need complicated sci-fi explanations for that
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Iconians don't reproduce though, it seems. They lost the World Heart, and went to Tau Dewa, where there were only 12 of them for the next 10,000 years. Without the genetic blueprints to create new Iconians, there were no new Iconians. They are made in a lab (presumably by the Preservers, who the Iconians killed - which, in hindsight, was an own-goal)
LUKARI GUERILLA GARDENING MILITIA - Glowing fingers are Growing fingers!
Iconians don't reproduce though, it seems. They lost the World Heart, and went to Tau Dewa, where there were only 12 of them for the next 10,000 years. Without the genetic blueprints to create new Iconians, there were no new Iconians. They are made in a lab (presumably by the Preservers, who the Iconians killed - which, in hindsight, was an own-goal)
That doesn't make sense, though. Even if we assume Iconians are immortal by nature, with all the techs at their disposal they are unable to even create clones of themselves because they don't know their own genome, yet they can create/modify other species at will?
Every theory why a species is unable to reproduce itself falls in a logical trap, the Kobali also don't make sense. Especially in a universe like Star Trek where, canonically, cloning (as in creating copies of entire organisms) doesn't require more effort than to push a button.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
not to mention the shattering of the laws of physics - they're both FEMALES
I considered that before I posted but decided we're talking about a 200,000 year old alien who hates the other one who is a half-human whose mother comes from an alternate timeline.
Whereas two women raise kids even now and the science is almost there to produce a human offspring with two genetic moms. So that's not really the implausible part.
That seems logical. Reminds me of "The bringers of pleasure and pain" bit with the Fabrini in "For the world is Hollow and I have touched the sky". Or the ladies and gents of Angel One. A biological caste system perhaps. The females for some reason developed greater intellect and then bred the males to be subservient. Perhaps the result of an ancient divide, men and women living as separate tribes only meeting for mating, the females however advanced by generations in science and technology rapidly while the males were at a stand still. Maybe the Iconians had a Themyscira and invisible jets.
But the male heralds seem blissful (sex must be great), while the Iconians see them as companions and pets.
Iconians were also apparently evolving away from just biology as they were on the path of immortality while reproducing less. They might have been heading towards non-corporeal evolution. I mean their brains are intertwined chroniton particles.
Iconians could also have a plain and simple matriarchy and their males do not hold positions of political power. You know, how men on Earth did all throughout modern history. You don't need complicated sci-fi explanations for that
I was responding to the sexual dimorphism angle. We know the Iconians can freely genetically modify the Heralds and themselves. I was just thinking that this started ages ago.
That said, Angel One and the Fabrini are still valid.
But you're right, simple matriarchy of course could easily and probably is the starting point.
Iconians don't reproduce though, it seems. They lost the World Heart, and went to Tau Dewa, where there were only 12 of them for the next 10,000 years. Without the genetic blueprints to create new Iconians, there were no new Iconians. They are made in a lab (presumably by the Preservers, who the Iconians killed - which, in hindsight, was an own-goal)
Not entirely correct. If you go through all of the conversations in Midnight it's made clear that the Iconians DID reproduce, but it has been slowing with the last Iconian born in the time frame of around a thousand years ago.
I think that as they moved closer to immortality, their fertility declined, though why is beyond me. The Iconians of course weren't worried. I would think that with the World Heart restored to them, they'll focus on repopulating, even if it is via cloning. I like the idea that old M'Tara from before the fall could come back. (Maybe we should've kidnapped her and dragged her with us back to the future.)
Iconians don't reproduce though, it seems. They lost the World Heart, and went to Tau Dewa, where there were only 12 of them for the next 10,000 years. Without the genetic blueprints to create new Iconians, there were no new Iconians. They are made in a lab (presumably by the Preservers, who the Iconians killed - which, in hindsight, was an own-goal)
That doesn't make sense, though. Even if we assume Iconians are immortal by nature, with all the techs at their disposal they are unable to even create clones of themselves because they don't know their own genome, yet they can create/modify other species at will?
Every theory why a species is unable to reproduce itself falls in a logical trap, the Kobali also don't make sense. Especially in a universe like Star Trek where, canonically, cloning (as in creating copies of entire organisms) doesn't require more effort than to push a button.
Well I don't think that the Kobali are a good example, Lichs don't reproduce after all.
Star Trek has made distinctions at cloning technology sophistication. Humans can make clones, but there's a limit and then the clones suffer replicative fading.
The Dominion can clone without limit, but I'm fairly certain that they maintain a template from which they clone, which is why when the cloning facility was destroyed they didn't have the option to clone a Weyoun 9 from Weyoun 8.
Cloning an Iconian however may be a touch difficult though now that I'm working through it. I would imagine creating an organic choniton infused brain is probably an order of magnitude harder than a synthetic positronic net.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
It doesn't matter how many simulations you run when those simulations are based on incomplete data. The law of unintended consequences was on full display in Butterfly when our simulations showed a great result and the real incursion was bad news because the real galaxy had stuff nobody knew about to program into the simulation. Garbage in, garbage out just as with any data calculation.
You're still aboard a ship shielded by the passage of time. You literally have forever to keep trying. Eventually you'll get it right.
I think part of his point was that the very creation of your time machine would disrupt your solution from ever occurring.
Somehow I think that trying for a million years getting down to the minutiae of vaporizing random pebbles in space in order to generate the outcome you want would drive a man insane...or conversely would require insanity to begin with.
The problem also becomes when like with Annorax someone develops a defense against you. When a species like the Na'khul and the Tholians, and the Krenim, and the Tuterians develop their own time travel and begin to do the same thing to you.
Trying to cheat history.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Comments
*cough*Red Alert*cough*
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
But at that point they weren't genocidal Iconians. It was still a point where they could've been positively influenced. It wasn't wrong to try.
If you want to talk about Sela, send Captain Picard in Yesterday's Enterprise a Temporal Prime Directive email expressly forbidding sending officers back with temporally displaced starships. Curiously, I can't come up with any reason that it's a good idea for Sela to exist...that's rather...sad. I suppose we need her to bring the Dominion into the battle. Though they were late.
T'Khet was loyal among her sisters. I can't see her knocking off M'Tara because M'Tara was always the leader. I do know there's a theory that she let M'Tara die in order to get L'Mirren on her side, BUT even after that, L'Mirren still outranked her. That said. We'd have to go back in time and assassinate ourselves, since T'Khet was going to stay at her post and die til we talked her out of that. Something I never actually would've done. I would've respected her decision like Kahless respected the guy who would not run from the storm.
Yeah. It has occurred that one great tyrant can have beneficial effects in the long run.
Except that the Hitler thing wouldn't just be about setting up the technological advancement, but the American century. It's true however that without the threat of TRIBBLE Germany Great Britain would've remained the preeminent world power, but we don't actually know what else that would've caused. I suppose you want to go knock off Hideki Tojo as well, not that he was the only Japanese Imperialist. In fact to resolve that problem you'd have to basically get them a cut of the spoils of war at the end of World War I, because all Japanese were disgruntled at the end of that conflict.
Sometimes things happen at just the right time. The lack of those things happening in another timeline could actually cause worse catastrophes.
I despise the very notion of going back and trying to perfect the future. It will never end. Someone going back and trying to tweak this one thing. A history with no mistakes. No losses. Such a thing does not exist, nor is it healthy. History that you learn nothing from. If that's what you want hop in cryostasis and wait for the Nexus to come around again. In the words of Jim Kirk, "I don't want my pain taken away, I need my pain."
Yes, a truly insane amount of people died in the Iconian War. Are we actually going to go back and stop every war, stop every unnatural death? It's ludicrous. Leave history as it is. That's why it's history.
The Iconia thing would be worse.... changing history in a major way that far back in time? Earth might not even exist if that happened.
My character Tsin'xing
Well, that's the problem with temporal experimentation... you make the wrong mistake and you lose your ability to go back and fix it. Bad idea.
That's why they tried doing it virtually through the holodeck, so that they wouldn't have to actually change history to figure out if the scenario was a good idea or not. But since it ultimately (and rightfully) proved to be all but useless, we learn the lesson that it's probably better not to tamper with it at all if we can help it.
In theory there are infinite scenarios including the outcome you want. But unless you know how to get to that outcome, well...|
Imagine your friend has chronic back pain from a spinal injury. It can theoretically be solved by surgery.
Now imagine you have no medical training and no doctor is available.
Do you slice your friend open and attempt spinal surgery?
See how absurd that can get?
Because we can do something in theory doesn't mean we have the skill to do it reliably in practice.
Then factor in that different types of time travel seem to have different rules how the timeline can be altered and what paradoxes are likely to result. We don't even have the paradox management tools like the temporal integrator yet.
That is...magnificent. Brilliant.
Aw man thank you so much. Shows how long it's been since I got to watch Enterprise. Ever since sci-fi became SyFy stopped rerunning it. Though I may have just blocked out large pieces of the Temporal Cold War arc. I would say that his appearance at the signing of the accords was intentionally reminiscent however.
I had this thought too. Especially given that Future Guy was supposed to be from a faction that couldn't actually time travel, only communicate through time.
Really, at no point does Future Guy ever directly attempt to stop the birth of the Federation, just tries to get Archer out of his (possibily metaphorical) hair. The one time he, or at least his Suliban agents, went too far and DID wipe out the Federation, it erased HIM too. All the other times after, he either only came into conflict with Enterprise when they also got involved in temporal shenanigans (the fight over Dano's time ship) or actively helped them (the info on the Sphere Builders, against Vosk).
Future guy could easily be the player captain saying 'TRIBBLE you guys, I'll fix it myself' to the other factions and pulling a Kirk to do what they can to fix things on their own.
Maybe Future Guy is an Iconian? Part Iconian? T'Ket and Sela's son?
Oh gods, the sheer amount of angry sex it would take for that pairing to produce offspring would rip the timeline a new one all on its own.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
To be fair...ALL the named Iconians we've ever seen are females...which leads me to an interesting sexual diamophism theory, considering all the HERALDS we've met seem pretty male...
Well as Sci-Fi fans there's lots of options there. The Asari option, the Toads that change sex option. Good old fashion Hermaphroditic species.
Fascinating enough, all our Iconians identify as female.
That seems logical. Reminds me of "The bringers of pleasure and pain" bit with the Fabrini in "For the world is Hollow and I have touched the sky". Or the ladies and gents of Angel One. A biological caste system perhaps. The females for some reason developed greater intellect and then bred the males to be subservient. Perhaps the result of an ancient divide, men and women living as separate tribes only meeting for mating, the females however advanced by generations in science and technology rapidly while the males were at a stand still. Maybe the Iconians had a Themyscira and invisible jets.
But the male heralds seem blissful (sex must be great), while the Iconians see them as companions and pets.
Iconians were also apparently evolving away from just biology as they were on the path of immortality while reproducing less. They might have been heading towards non-corporeal evolution. I mean their brains are intertwined chroniton particles.
Valoreah, I dispute that "with a timeship, all things are possible, given infinite time". In the original episode, we saw this by implication - no matter how many incursions were made, it was not possible to completely undo the results of the original incursion until the existence of the timeship itself, and thus all of its actions, was undone. Everything proceeded from that first cause, and until that was removed, all the way back to the start, all they could do was get incrementally closer - but never entirely there, like Zeno's arrow.
The 2002 remake of The Time Machine sets up a similar paradox: without the event that causes the Time Machine to be built (in an attempt to undo it), it will not be; thus, no matter what the Traveller does in an attempt to undo that event, it cannot be undone in a timeline where the Machine exists, because the Machine's existence depends on it.
Even with time travel, some things are still impossible. The set of infinities accessible by any given time machine and/or traveller is constrained by their personal timeline or history - their origin and any past actions. You can't undo these events and prior incursions, though others can; they already happened for you, and anything you do to change them further flows from that. The only way to get back to the original state is for everything to be undone (by someone else) back to that point. (And the only way I can see to 'cheat' around this, which is limited to very specific circumstances, is to deceive your past self through careful use of the Observer Effect, so that you didn't actually do what you thought you did.)
Iconians could also have a plain and simple matriarchy and their males do not hold positions of political power. You know, how men on Earth did all throughout modern history. You don't need complicated sci-fi explanations for that
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That doesn't make sense, though. Even if we assume Iconians are immortal by nature, with all the techs at their disposal they are unable to even create clones of themselves because they don't know their own genome, yet they can create/modify other species at will?
Every theory why a species is unable to reproduce itself falls in a logical trap, the Kobali also don't make sense. Especially in a universe like Star Trek where, canonically, cloning (as in creating copies of entire organisms) doesn't require more effort than to push a button.
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I considered that before I posted but decided we're talking about a 200,000 year old alien who hates the other one who is a half-human whose mother comes from an alternate timeline.
Whereas two women raise kids even now and the science is almost there to produce a human offspring with two genetic moms. So that's not really the implausible part.
I was responding to the sexual dimorphism angle. We know the Iconians can freely genetically modify the Heralds and themselves. I was just thinking that this started ages ago.
That said, Angel One and the Fabrini are still valid.
But you're right, simple matriarchy of course could easily and probably is the starting point.
Not entirely correct. If you go through all of the conversations in Midnight it's made clear that the Iconians DID reproduce, but it has been slowing with the last Iconian born in the time frame of around a thousand years ago.
I think that as they moved closer to immortality, their fertility declined, though why is beyond me. The Iconians of course weren't worried. I would think that with the World Heart restored to them, they'll focus on repopulating, even if it is via cloning. I like the idea that old M'Tara from before the fall could come back. (Maybe we should've kidnapped her and dragged her with us back to the future.)
Well I don't think that the Kobali are a good example, Lichs don't reproduce after all.
Star Trek has made distinctions at cloning technology sophistication. Humans can make clones, but there's a limit and then the clones suffer replicative fading.
The Dominion can clone without limit, but I'm fairly certain that they maintain a template from which they clone, which is why when the cloning facility was destroyed they didn't have the option to clone a Weyoun 9 from Weyoun 8.
Cloning an Iconian however may be a touch difficult though now that I'm working through it. I would imagine creating an organic choniton infused brain is probably an order of magnitude harder than a synthetic positronic net.
I think part of his point was that the very creation of your time machine would disrupt your solution from ever occurring.
Somehow I think that trying for a million years getting down to the minutiae of vaporizing random pebbles in space in order to generate the outcome you want would drive a man insane...or conversely would require insanity to begin with.
The problem also becomes when like with Annorax someone develops a defense against you. When a species like the Na'khul and the Tholians, and the Krenim, and the Tuterians develop their own time travel and begin to do the same thing to you.
Trying to cheat history.